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fuse the indulgence of them when no purpose of improvement or usefulness sanctions their excitement , " It were a wantonness , and would demand Severe reproof , if we were men whose hearts Could hold vain dalliance with the misery Even of the dead ; contented thence to draw
A momentary pleasure , never marked By reason , barren of all future good . " And he is right ; for if we wish that our actions should be inseparable from virtuous feeling , we must be careful that emotions , however innocent , should not be encouraged to arise and pass away , without tending to the accomplishment of some moral purpose . When , by no agency of our own , emotions are excited , it is therefore our duty to refer them to some
principle , to bring them to the support of some habit . The glories of a sunrise , the sublimity of the stormy ocean , the radiant beauties of the night , awaken spontaneous emotions : but it is our duty to perpetuate their influence by looking " through Nature up to Nature's God . " In like manner , we should convert every pang and glow of conscience , every excitement of sympathy into the nourishment of our moral being : and for the result we may take the word of one who , in his address to Duty , shews that he has obeyed her call , and received her rewards .
" Stern Lawgiver ! yet thou dost wear The Godhead ' s most benignant grace ; Nor know we any thing so fair As is the smile upon thy face . Flowers laugh before thee on their beds , And fragrance in thy footing treads . "
Having traced these facts back to their principles , there is a strong temptation to anticipate the operation of these principles on our future being , and their influence on the happiness of another state . But this would lead us into too wide a field . It is sufficient , for the present , to reflect that all beings and all circumstances may be , must be , made to minister to our spiritual life for good or for evil . We are subject , during every moment of our existence , to influences which we cannot reject , but which will work good or "harm within us , according to the dispositions with which they are
received . If well received , this world of matter will gradually become to us a spiritual universe ; if the contrary , our own nature will become more abject than that of the brutes that perish , and infinitely further removed from happiness . In the one case , all things will minister to our peace ; in the other , to our woe . In both it may be said , that " all things are ours : " let us be careful " that we are Christ ' s , " and that , through him , we are God ' s .
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162 On the Agency of Habits in the Regeneration of Feelings .
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V .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1829, page 162, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2570/page/10/
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